5 Reasons Why KDE Is Better Than Unity

It’s no secret that KDE is not the most popular desktop environment for Linux/Unix users. With Ubuntu’s success slowly breaking through to the mainstream, there is now a whole swath of users who have no idea about it, or recognize it as “the other one”. In many ways, it’s exotic, having no other desktops environments forked or built from it. It seems to stand alone in excellence.

5 It’s hyper-polished

If you need to spend an exorbitant amount of time in front of a computer screen then you will want it to look good. There really is no comparison between the default Oxygen theme– and now the oxygen font— and Ubuntu’s sleepy, low-contrast color-scheme and hard-gradient Ambiance theme. The separation of Plasma and the basic widget-set for drawing windows was a wise decision by the KDE project! Plasma allows for dynamic graphics inside of desktop widgets and panels while windows are all drawn in a more practical and static way. This puts a point of division between the two elements and gives them an elegant contrast that makes the experience all the more worthwhile.

4 Infinite customizability

If you install Ubuntu 11.10 today, you will be left with virtually NO options for customizing the look & feel to meet your needs. You won’t even be able to size down the offensively over-sized fonts without installing a separate package! You won’t be able to move your panel to an area that suits your tastes and you will be stuck with a small collection of mediocre themes. With KDE, there are no limits. You are able to download new window borders right from the system-settings menu, as well as wallpaper packs, plasma (desktop) themes and even color schemes. Move your panel all around the screen. Make it smaller, right-align it, center it. These choices are all available to you.

Well Canonical, I have news for you. Your core demographic is still the Networking professional. The content-creator. The artist. All of use need to manage our files and we don’t find choice and options a burden at all. If you want to design a computer that will allow the every-man to access the Internet without complaint, Chrome OS has beat you to it.

3 File management

Comparing Nautilus and Dolphin is like comparing nothing to something. Canonical has put the Linux desktop at a crossroads. They want to make Ubuntu so incredibly simplified that there will be no excuses for the every-man not to use it. Well Canonical, I have news for you. Your core demographic is still the Networking professional. The content-creator. The artist. All of use need to manage our files and we don’t find choice and options a burden at all. If you want to design a computer that will allow the every-man to access the Internet without complaint, Chrome OS has beat you to it.

2 Intent

As I touched on briefly in number 3, Unity is not for me. Unity is a product that Canonical wants to deliver to the masses on every kind of device with a screen. There is no harm in this at all, but it does affect the immediate priorities of the project. KDE puts usability first, and I believe that it always will. The 4.x series got off to a really rocky start back in 2006, but what we have now in KDE 4.7 is a stable, mature, rock-solid software collection that any user should be able to trust in.

1 You can manage your windows with it

I’m sure the trolls are already lighting their torches over this one, but it’s true. I’ll even give my thanks to Microsoft Windows for this one. Way back when in the days of Windows 95, the one thing you could accomplish on your dangerous unstable system is effective multi-tasking. The task-bar was and still is a boon for those who use their computers for productivity. It’s not true for everyone, but when you are editing images in the GIMP, or any other program that doesn’t isolate its work into one window, you can quickly lose control of your work-flow in Ubuntu 11.10 using Unity. The idea of iconifying your tasks is expertly executed in Windows 7, and that fundemental idea is available to you in Unity, though it doesn’t really pull it off in a usable way. Now, allow me to dowse your torches for a moment. If you’ve got a tune playing in Banshee and a web-browser full of tabs open with nothing else, you can get by with any DE that supports alt+tab, so here, unity is OK!

KDE takes a very traditional route with a twist. By default you manage your windows with a task-manager ala’ Microsoft Windows. You can dock your favorite apps here as icons and when you open them, the icon disappears and becomes a task. This is really a compromise between the extreme over-simplification of Unity and the excellence of the Windows Super-bar.

KDE FTW!

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About Dean Howell

Aside from being a huge Sega fan, Dean is an LPIC certified Linux professional with over a decade experience. In addition to spending his free time burning through the classics from Sega and evangelizing open source, he's also the editor-in-cheif of The Powerbase.
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It got a bad name with the release of KDE4.0 however every single release since then has been better and better.

Unlike gnome3/Unity you can actually configure it and make it a usable desktop (without the need for installed extra tools…)

I believe that Kubuntu has given KDE a bad name – its always a half arsed non complete desktop. The most stable KDE I use is Arch Linux, it just always works the way you want. OpenSuse/Fedora/Mandriva all have good versions of KDE4 also.

I can’t think of a good up to date debian based distro – even debian sid is usually shipping an older version of KDE.

However I have recently tried Mint’s Cinnamon desktop and that does look very promising also – far better than gnome3/unity.

Mint 12 is shortly releasing a KDE version so that may be worth a look

Chris Davlin

I too love KDE. After years of using gnome2, I bit the bullet and really learned how to setup KDE to my liking (there’s a LOT of configurability there, unlike Unity or GS) and I couldn’t be happier. Almost any distro’s KDE is good, but the best for speed and stability are Arch, Debian (testing), Slackware, and Fedora (as long as you don’t need proprietary AMD video drivers – Fedora seems to be alone in this regard).

anonymous

It’s important to note Gentoo as well. I’ve never had a faster and snappier experience with KDE.

Unity is for stupid consumers, it treats its users as though they were weakminded children.

Given that we’re talking about Linux here and not Windows, for my money, Canonical have thrown their customers, and their credibility, out of the window.
But that’s what you get when you employ people with all the right paper based qualifications and no actual understanding or love of their subject.

Lazarus101

KDE eats way too much resources. I’ve got a decent workstation (Q9550, 4GB DDR3) and everytime i’m doing some actual work (eclipse, grails, 10-15 tabs in Firefox, maybe a PDF or two etc.) my system is almost unusable. So I switched to LXDE, it’s by far not as polished as KDE but it stays out of my way while i’m doing actual work. Oh, and with LXDE when you press “Shutdown” it will shutdown within seconds, in KDE sometimes it takes minutes.

Coats

??

I’m writing this from KDE on an E8400 with 8 GB RAM, and I don’t have the kind of trouble you describe — and I seem to be a much heavier user than you are: environmental modeling, very high resolution GIS work, all that. Which version of Firefox — an older memory-leaking one?

Grish

There’s something wrong with your system. I’m running KDE on 3 systems, one with 5GB, one with 4GB, and one with 2.5GB, two of these with rather ancient CPUs (the 2.5GB is a 5-year-old Centrino), and KDE 4.6-7 works great on all of them.

Try installing Kubuntu or Linux Mint KDE 12 fresh. I’ve found one big problem is when I install a new distro onto an older one; all the settings and junk that accumulate over the years in ~/.kde and ~/.local seem to screw KDE up a lot. So at the minimum, wipe out those two directories when you install a new distro.

register

I’m a long time fan of KDE, and agree with most of what you’re saying but Unity is where KDE4 was years back. Unity will improve and is now. Some of the recent changes like lenses and mods to improve the desktop is making Unity a build-it-by-apps (BIBA) windowing system.

register

The problem I have with Kubuntu is not enough updates and patches happening. No patches to me means no improvements.

There aren’t many other good KDE distros. SUSE is unusable after they made their deal with the devil, and the RPM distros are generally a PITA anyway as far as add-on software; their repos just don’t have the amount of pre-built software that the Debian-based distros do, and after using SUSE for many years, I no longer feel like building everything from source.

http://profiles.google.com/deanhowell2 Dean Howell

Have you enabled backports? Everything that I have is up-to-date. Everything.

Anonymous

really how hard is it to be better than so-called unity? it’s not even a PC interface. therefore it’s a tad unfair to compare it to real UIs like KDE.
that said, KDE is not for me, i run openbox. that’s what i need to compute comfortably and i guess maybe that’s even the kind of person i am
but i did test KDE on debian and was right impressed. i concluded that a lot of what is perceived as “KDE bloat” really had to do with how distros implement it. on debian it flies.
as a DE it can compete comfortably with big commercial DEs on proprietary OS’s, imo.

At the moment, I am using Unity 5 to try it out, but am a regular KDE user. Unity and GNOME shell are just more work to use. Too many mouse clicks to do simple things. The distance to travel in most cases is farther. They both use extensive keyboard shortcuts to get around many problems, but that is a step back for me. I am a visual person and most people are. The keyboard and mouse do not work well together. It takes more time unless you do all of your work from one or the other.

They have tried to go in both directions with Unity and with 5.0 they have tried to make it more usable and more configurable. I see potential and more with Unity than GS. I think that Unity will reach its potential when it comes working OTB on touchscreens. Right now it is neither this nor that, IMO.

I will not change from KDE no matter how slick Unity or GS become. I have used KDE for over a decade through thick and thin and it has not let me down. We just get each other. KDE works the way I do. It is complex and adaptable.

As for the criticism for it not being fast, I have used KDE, Unity and GNOME shell on several distributions. I find Kubuntu no slower than openSuSE KDE. I find GS faster on Fedora, but KDE is as fast on Fedora as GS. In Ubuntu, KDE is faster than both GS and Unity. This is my subjective opinion based on wait times for applications to open and doing photo editing in GIMP, etc. I have seen stats on Phoronix that somewhat backs this up, that Kwin is faster than Mutter and Compiz, but I can’t find the article to back that assertion up.

Let each person try them out on different platforms and be their own judge. Then use whatever works for you. I am just pleased to have choice and to be able to work and play on Linux.

http://facebook.com/domcan2 1roxtar

Why does there always have to be “Better Than” articles or “Versus” blogs??? What a person likes is always so subjective. Articles such as these should be entitled, “Why I Prefer KDE Over Unity”. This sounds much more acceptable and would make me more interested to consider some of your points. Otherwise all these titles do is get people to fight with and/or insult users who prefer different desktop environments or distros.

I am of the camp that loves the fact that we have so many great choices. Some fit better than others, but in the grand scheme of things, we are all enjoying Linux. I prefer Ubuntu and Unity, but does that makes me a “mindless consumer who likes being told how to use my computer”??? No! It just works better for me. If you don’t like Unity, don’t call it shit. Tell me you have a kickass KDE desktop running Arch or Fedora, or whatever. Show me your screenshots and let’s say, “Nice job”.

http://profiles.google.com/deanhowell2 Dean Howell

I’ve written almost 100 pieces here and this is what makes people click, unfortunately…

http://twitter.com/PlaKen PlaKen

There is a need for ‘better than’ and ‘versus’ articles because a lie … sorry, an opinion spoken a thousand times comes to be accepted as the truth. The article starts by saying that most users consider KDE as ‘some other desktop’, which it is not.

Before Ubuntu came along, KDE/GNOME/XFCE and others were all desktops of every distribution. Ubuntu started an incorrect, IMO, trend of preferring one desktop over another when they started building their ‘default’ product with GNOME. Not long ago, even with SuSE Linux, I remember the installer listing 3 or 4 desktop choices but none were selected by default. That was *real* choice.

Ubuntu has forced the GNOME/GTK look into people’s minds as being the “look” of Linux desktop. Hence we need articles such as this to point out that there is choice.

After that, yes, everyone is free to pick what they want.

Tom Nardi

Good point, something I hadn’t really thought of until you mentioned it. I remember the installers for more or less every distribution I used in the Linux 2.4 days would ask you which desktop you wanted to install. Some still do (I.E. Slackware), but there is certainly a trend towards desktop environments defining distributions; such as Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc, etc.

Anonymous

Oddly enough, I use KDE not only because of its looks (and the other reasons mentioned here), I use it because of stability. I have a slightly stupid graphics card in my Gateway NV79, and Unity and Gnome 3 don’t play nice. They tend to slow down and crash on me.

XFCE and LXDE aren’t as feature-rich as I need them to be, and Gnome Classic is a mess. Mate is buggy. In the end, KDE (with most of the desktop effects turned off, but not all of them) is the most reliable. This is new and strange to me, but I suppose I’d have to say that I am a KDE convert now.

http://aqfl.net Ant

I don’t like KDE v4. I still prefer v3.5.10.

http://profiles.google.com/deanhowell2 Dean Howell

Do you use Trinity?

http://aqfl.net Ant

No. I want to see it become official (in Debian) and more supported with others.

Kennyk87

What OS do you use?

Charlie

I like the font used on this site? Anyone knows the name of the font? Looks great …

Kennyk87

Telex

Charlie

Thank you

http://profiles.google.com/deanhowell2 Dean Howell

Yep, it’s Telex. One of the nicest sans-script fonts I’ve ever seen…

Kennyk87

I’ve never heard of it before seeing this article. BTW. What operating system do you use? The KDE theme is pretty crisp.

http://profiles.google.com/deanhowell2 Dean Howell

Using Kubuntu 11.10. The only thing that;s been changed is the Plasma theme…

http://profiles.google.com/topchider1965 v m

wq

Anonymous

While one’s taste is important (so important that it may actually overrule a “best” choice), there is such a thing as ‘the best’ desktop and ‘the best’ type of ice cream — in the latter case, the best is the one that is made without GM ingredients, without ingredients from factory farms, with milk from cows that are treated well, and that doesn’t contain any harmful additives.

In the former case, the best is the one that has a reasonable architecture and good code.

This is important even for an end user who will never do any development, because it affects how quickly developers can get new work done – and therefore, how much better the environment becomes in a timeframe.

Given the abomination that is GObject, anything GTK based can’t be considered to be built on a reasonable architecture and good code. That leaves KDE and Razor-Qt. (The latter has a bit of catching up to do, but is really amazing given how new it is – compare it to XFCE/LDE and friends when they were its age).

En0

These are subjective opinions. Lets all remember that different people like different things. As an example, i feel that KDE, Gnome, Unity, XFCE and others spend to much time of integration and looks. I want a WM that does very little and is easy to customize. My choice is still Fluxbox and it works for me. Calling users stupid for picking something else is not just silly but very arrogant. What makes you qualified to decide what other people need and what.

The advantage to Linux is choice and i think we are all better off if all these WM work streams continue.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_V2CWQUQ5YPRXVKPNBDFRXS6YJ4 RSmith

Linux is about choice, and if you’re fortunate to run a fast desktop with a Core i7 processor and lots of RAM like I am, KDE is awesome. However, I really can’t see why people continue to run computers almost 10 years old on frugal desktops. Razor-QT is looking like a nice alternative for those that do, though.

Grish

I’m running on an old Core2Duo (one of the very first ones released, actually an engineering sample marked “Intel Confidential”), 1.6GHz, and 5GB of RAM. KDE4.7.3 works great and is perfectly fast.

My wife’s aptop is 5-6 years old, has some kind of slow CPU (Centrino I think, it was a pretty low-end Lenovo at the time), and only 2.5GB of RAM. KDE4.6 works great on that too, and is perfectly fast. I will admit that I had to upgrade the RAM from its initial 512MB though, because it was swapping way too much with so little RAM.

jgm

I can run OpenSUSE with KDE on an old laptop with a 1.8GHz mobile Sempron CPU, 512MB of ram, and an unbelievably slow 75GB 4200RPM IDE hard drive!

I tried LXDE and XFCE on it, but to be honest, they seem horribly berift of features in comparison (especially configuration options for power, trackpad, etc.) and only gain about 50MB. I just didn’t find the sacrifice worth it.

Andrew Mezzi

I’m running Kubuntu on the cheapest netbook Best Buy had, with a 1GHz Intel Atom and 1GB of ram, and it is really fast. The only other distro I’ve found that I like is Lubuntu, which I keep as a live USB, but like jgm said, LXDE seems to be devoid of features. I don’t use XFCE because no matter what I do, I can’t get it do look good. KDE is pretty fast, though, even on this computer.

stolennomenclature

I’ve used various versions of KDE over the years on many different PC’s, and without fail it always ends up crashing, in various ways. I have rarely ever had Gnome go down, but KDE does so with monotonous regularity. In fact, I don’t think I have ever used KDE where it has not crashed, unless It was only running for a few minutes. Shame, because the latest version looks great. I am using Fedora 16 at the moment and started with KDE, but had to switch to Gnome in order to be able to shut the system down without it hanging. I think I was only able to user Apper once without it going down.

Fatriff

While I did notice it was unstable before.. as in 15 odd months ago.. I’ve had the same installation for nearly a year now and it has never crashed even once. I am used to seeing messages like uptime 113 days..

I will admit i’ve had issues shutting down a few times in the past but that is easily solved with REISUB.. I usually have no need to ever shut down, who does?? when you have sleep, linux isn’t like Windows, it doesn’t slow down the longer it is running for.

anonymous

I’ve been using KDE for years on my Gentoo desktop, and it’s very stable, smooth and snappy. I suppose it’s not the same for everyone, though.

None

I prefer using unity over KDE but the truth to be said i think KDE is the best. It is the only real DE i’ve ever seen. You can do whatever you want without third party software and it is very featureful.

Anonymous

I like my Gnome Shell 😉

http://www.facebook.com/jsebean Jonah Sabean

eww 😛 KDE for me. Actually, I intend to get a tablet and install Gnome shell on it, it rocks on a tablet interface. KDE is for the desktop

http://www.securitronlinux.com/ John Cartwright

The KDE desktop is a million times more stable and configurable than the Unity desktop ever could be, I have configured mine to look just like Gnome 2.32.1.

Utilities like dropbox or Ubuntu One are specially designed to work under Nautilus, not Dolphin. Using them under a KDE environment can become a kind of nightmare. And there are many others.
If we want to make linux more and more popular, we need a system that can just work, as it is configured after installing. Do we really want a system “just for experts”?

fuzzylumpkins

bashing unity while promoting KDE is something an “it builds character” father would say….KDE is convoluted and inefficient. Unity is fast, easy to use and simple…you don’t NEED to customize things that work well in the first place…

msx

Did you ever tried Arch’s implementation of KDE SC 4.8.4? OMG I’m having a boner!

Dusty Bombasti

I’m using KDE since years now and have been always happy. Actually I switched over from Suse to Kubuntu and never regret that. Since a couple of weeks I’m using now a netbook. Ok, KDE is not that fast there. But I tested Ubuntu with Unity as well as with Gnome 3 and both showed similar perfermance. I even have to impression they were a bit slower than KDE.

For me KDE is the best joice and I fully agree with every single point in the article. I want a nice desktop, customized to my personal needs and that I can’t get with Unity. The design of Ubuntu is absolutey not my taste.

http://twitter.com/vladimiro221077 vladimiro

I agree. Kde let you to manage windows like you need. Kde is polished, clean, clear. My eyes thanks for this.
I’ve tried unity many times, many try; the results is even the same: I lose control, lose concentration, lose my windows.
I prefer Kde, or lxde. Traditional and usable desktops. Simple, stable, elegant.
+1 for this article.

Aditya Goturu

Grrr…

http://silicone99.com/ Santiago

I used Gnome until a friend of mine insisted me to try KDE… now 3 years later… I’m a K happy user

guest

Thats pretty much stupid. I’ve use all DEs out there and even worked without them at all, tons of different experminets in my whole linux life.
That said. I can work perfectly fine anywhere, i am polishing everything to my needs and no, not even KDE default look was something i like, i was awful, before change pretty much everything.
The very goal of GNOME was always simplicity. Its made for people that needs just to work right after install OS. Unity is pretty much tooks the same steps.
The funny thing is that in KDE alot of RAM is wasted on desktop. Once you installed it your making it for yourself and it consumes more and more ram. I’ve noticed it aftrer pc become buggy. It consumed around 2 Gb of my RAM, it was half memory wasted on system only. The desktop itself become convinient and look good but i couldn’t work there. Turned off some things that made it look as i want and you have a working desktop that really isn’t far away of usability and looks than gnome-shell and unity, still consumed 100 Mb ram more.
So no, i like gnome-shell and kde-plasma, and in kde i can use terminal less experiance but you can’t call other work spaces bad, they all have their logic of usage. KDE can simulate some things but at a cost of ram and nothing realy trumps others. Probably in 2014 when evryone will have 32 Gb ram it will be better.

Rakesh Gopal

Have been a Unity Desktop user and find KDE to be inferior. Here are the responses to the points that you made:

1) Hyper-polished (Asthetics): It’s a personal choice. But I like wobbly windows and
Fire, Water and Ice effects that comes on Unity. But I’m unable to get
them on KDE. It looks like the same old Windows desktop and is boring.

2)
Customizable: Really? I’m unable to get the KDE launcher to show-up,
when I press the Super (win-logo) key. Plus the above points. While I’m
able to make the Unity desktop on another computer, look very-much like
Mac desktop.

3) File Management: I’m using Thunar with Unity
desktop, as I like Thunar. But I know people who liked Nautilus too.
It’s a personal choice again.

4) Intent: Unity is also made with
an intent to make it usable. Why would sombody build a DE with an intent
to make it UN-Usable? That was a personal openion from the writer and
has nothing to do with Unity or KDE.

5) Managing multiple
windows: Lets take the experience of using GIMP on both the DE’s. GIMP
has 3 windows The main window, Tools window and the Layers window.
KDE:
I’ve to get an image from the internet, so, I’m switching to
full-screen Firefox, saving the image and now back to gimp. There are
three task-bar items for gimp and I click on one of them and only that
window comes up. Having only one of these windows on the screen is
useless. I have to bring-back each window individually! Even pressing
Alt+tab only brings one of the GIMP windows to the front. That’s a
really bad experience.
Unity: I’ve saved the images from Firefox and I
want to switch to GIMP. There is only one Gimp icon on the side-bar
(with three triangles, indicating there are there windows). Click on
Gimp icon and all the three Gimp windows, come to the front! Or press
Alt+tab from Firefox and still all three Gimp windows come together!﻿

rakeshgoaplisadick

Oh man, another “I’m an airhead person who don’t fucking know what is talking about so I misuse the awesome liberty Internet gave us all to spread FUD and all kind of bullshit wherever I can”.

Actually you don’t know a sh1t about KDE SC, don’t you?

1) System Settings -> Desktop Effects. You can add any other window effect from there. RESULT: BUSTED.

3) Thunar, REALLY? And you say it’s far superior than Dolphin? ARE YOU FUCKING TROLLING US? And how is Thunar related to Unity? You’re BUSTED.

4) WRONG: Unity is made with a focus on a multiplatform GUI, specially conceived for touch devices. As such an approach of “one size fits all” is irrevocably doomed. Worst of all, Unity is the most un-flexible desktop environment you can find in the F/LOSS universe and Canonical had stated that they don’t care what “power users” wants or need, their policy is the same of Apple: fuck you all, we have the true, you’re mindless, brainless zombies so sharap. If you want a versatile Unity desktop you need to start dealing (and fighting) with PPAs and install a custom-made, hacked Unity. Once again, BUSTED.

5) Seriously: are you a retard or a troll? Didn’t you fucking realize that right-clicking on the taskbar would bring up a properties dialog where you can select how you want the taskbar to behave? EVEN, if you don’t like the standard taskbar that’s shipped vanilla you can go to KDE-Look.org and KDE-Apps.org and search for all kind of fancy taskbars like Windows 7, MacOS and such. Hell, most distributions even bundle some of these plasmoids so you can just install them from the command line. EVEN BETTER: KDE SC lets you extend itself within itself so you usually only need to click a button to interactively select and install the feature you want.

Finally: Unity at this time is a fine product but is *very* young, it’s totally green and still needs a lot of polish. Also, at this time, Unity is just a bit more than a GUI while KDE SC is a DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM that have been evolved through the years.

You should make your homework before start talking shit happily.

james lagerman

kde is better thats why

james lagerman

1roxtar You should have stated you perfer Unity at the beginning of your comment before complaining about this blogger preferring KDE. This blog is about why he’s feels its better, he is not calling users of Unity midless. He is however pointing out key features in KDE that Unity does not have and thats a needed debate.

André Correia

horrible article, is easy to talk about the “better things” what about 2d and 3d performance? unity is a lot better, kde is the worst on linux. file manager? is good and confusing, to much things. if you want a confused shell kde is the one